In millimeter wave (mmWave) communications, beamforming has been used to overcome the expected path losses inherent in mmWave communications. Depending upon the path loss between a transmission point (TP) and a user equipment (UE), different levels of beamforming gain may be needed for transmitting data on different TP to UE links. Reference and/or control signals are used in communications systems to enable channel estimation, estimate interference, assist synchronization, and so on. Therefore, the reference and/or control signals are expected to be receivable by all of the UEs, even in the high path loss environment of mmWave communications. Beamforming of the reference and/or control signals is one way to combat the path loss. However, beamforming the reference and/or control signals in all the directions needed lead to high signaling overhead, which reduces the overall communications system data rate.